Casting
by skyeward
Summary: Now officially a series of increasingly lengthy drabbles that seem to be forming a story of some kind. I'm not in charge here, so don't expect miracles. Modern AU, the characters are actors filming the Legend of Korra series. Korrasami if you tilt your head and squint just right. (It's all Korrasami all the time in my head though.)
1. Chapter 1

"…and she'll be playing Asami Sato."

"Huh?" Blue eyes – contact lenses – blinked in a dark face, the girl looking up from examining the page of potential costume designs that had been shoved into her hands a moment ago. Poor timing, she thought, since the overworked PA had lost her within seconds and she'd missed her introduction of the other young actress.

"Are you even paying attention? Look, I've got places to be. Just introduce yourselves and be in costuming at eight on Monday, got it?"

"Yeah, got it boss lady."

With that, the woman strode off quickly, heels tapping on the concrete as she abandoned her charges in the middle of the lot.

"So, uh…what was your name again?"

"Not telling," the black-haired girl chuckled, tapping her nose with one elegantly-manicured nail, "You'll just have to call me Asami until you figure it out for yourself."

The laughing response only widened Asami's grin, and she turned to begin walking in the opposite direction of the PA, headed for the front gate. The brown-haired girl fell into step quickly.

"Well," she responded when her laughter finally petered out, "You'll have to call me Korra then."

"But I already know your real name! I was paying attention!"

"No, no, no," the girl now known as Korra laughed again, waving her hands, "If I have to call you Asami, you have to call me Korra!"

"I guess I can deal with that. So," she continued, hesitant to pull out a cliché but honestly interested in getting to know the star of the show they'd start filming in just a couple weeks, "Tell me about yourself…Korra."


	2. Chapter 2

"So, Asami…"

The girl in question giggled a bit behind one hand, prompting an eye-roll from her darker-skinned companion.

"You're the one who said I had to call you that, so either stop giggling every time I do or tell me your real name."

"No and no," responded the taller girl with a smirk, her eyes on her coffee cup as she slowly stirred in yet another packet of sugar, "So you may as well just ask whatever you were about to."

A long-suffering sigh was her initial response, but eventually the girl she'd been calling Korra spat out the question.

"Are you really Japanese?"

"Are you really from the South Pole?"

"Did you really just answer my question with a question?"

"Did you know I used to do this for fun as a kid?"

"Who didn't?"

"But no, I'm not Japanese." Asami laughed at last, ending the game before it got out of hand. She had a feeling that between the two of them, no conflict or competition would ever stay small.

"I win! And I'm not from the South Pole," Korra responded, fully aware that Asami had purposefully lost the game but unwilling to give up her victory anyway, "But I _am_ half-Inuit."

"Really? I'm a halfsie too…Taiwanese, though. On my mom's side."

"White dad and Asian mom? Stereotype much?" Korra asked that one mostly into her coffee cup.

"Shut up much?"

"Never."


	3. Chapter 3

It was five after eight when the dusky-skinned young woman finally stumbled through the door of the women's costuming room and into utter chaos. She'd been hoping to slip in unnoticed in the cacophany, but apparently uptight production assistants were perfectly adapted to their habitats, as she was spotted almost immediately.

"You're late, Miss-" The chastising was cut off by Asami - or rather her actress, who had escaped her costumer and come to greet 'Korra' by the door.

"Korra," she laughed, grabbing a tanned hand in one of her pale ones and tugging, "You're late!" The raven-haired girl looked entirely too happy for just after eight on a Monday morning, but at least she did her companion a favour by dragging her away from the irritated woman in high heels and over to one of the costumers.

"Korra, meet Henri. Henri, meet Korra."

"Nice to meet you, Korra," the man chirped, his thick French-Canadian accent making the Inuit-mix smile. It reminded her of her mother's mother, with her expressive hands and her tendency to lapse into French when excited.

"Uh, nice to meet you too Henri, but my name is actually-"

"Korra!"

This time she was the one being interrupted by Asami, and she began to understand why the assistant had stalked off in a temper after it had happened to her. It _was_actually rather irritating. She turned to the other girl, one hand to her forehead as she tried to think of a way to phrase her irritation diplomatically. She didn't want to lose their rapidly-blossoming friendship, but she was getting a little tired of the name game they'd been playing all weekend.

"Look, Asami…"

She paused, still uncertain about how to put it, and then her opportunity was promptly snatched away when the other girl's costumer swept up and carried her off, the woman clucking her annoyance as she corraled her wayward actress.

"We'll talk later!" the girl called over her shoulder, and the shorter actress blinked when she noticed that Asami must have donned her contacts; her eyes were a pale, luminous green.

Korra sighed.

"Shall we?" That was Henri, one eyebrow cocked as he held up his tape measure questioningly.

"Yeah…might as well."

The initial measuring was quick and painless - the costumes had already been made, this was a makeup session and a double-check of costume sizing, fit, and wearability. The last was especially important in a show that was to feature quite a lot of martial arts, as the clothing needed to stay fairly still and look good even through lengthy fight scenes. After being stripped of her street clothes - she had to remind herself sternly that actors were not supposed to be body shy - and redressed in the first version of her costume, she was led outside.

Asami already waited, and their two costumers shoved them towards each other.

"Go on," urged Henri, "Do a little of your fighting thing. I need to check how these things move!"

"Yeah, Korra, come and get me!" Asami laughed, taking up a fairly generic opening stance with her body turned to one side and hands held open and raised defensively. With a shrug, Korra settled down across from her.

"Okay, but two things first."

Her only answer was one raised eyebrow. She wished she could do that. She cast the thought aside as she began a lazy, exploratory circling of her opponent.

"First, do you have any preference as to style? I don't know what you've been trained in. Second, I have a bet for you: if I win, you have to call me by name. If you win, we can keep it up with the character names or whatever. Deal?"

Asami just favoured her with a confident grin.

"Any style you can throw at me, I can probably use too. As for the other…" She shifted her stance slightly, upper body and one hand twisting as she threw the first punch. It missed, of course, but Korra quickly firmed her sloppy guard before a real assault came her way.

"Deal."

And the fight was on.


	4. Chapter 4

These pieces are getting longer and longer, and this makes two in pretty direct chronological order. I may have to assemble them into one larger piece soon.

(Side note: As long as I call the show being filmed 'unorthodox', that gives me the right to butcher everything having to do with the filming of a television series, right? Right.)

* * *

The fight was short and, had it been allowed to go on any longer, had promised to be quite brutal. Flagrant mixing of styles and clashing competitive spirits meant that it devolved into a sort of unregulated MMA match within about thirty seconds.

Luckily, the costumers came together to call a halt within the first minute, dragging their adrenaline-high actresses back into the building.

Korra, at least, was quite disoriented by the whole thing – she'd gone from staring down what seemed to be a very worthwhile opponent to staring at herself in a mirror as Henri handed her a different shirt and asked a flurry of questions while jotting frantically.

"How did it feel? It rucked up at the waist, but that can be tamed…it stayed nice and still in the chest and back. Is it too thick? It looks too thick, but we don't want any kind of, you know, _thermometer_ action going on if the set gets cold-"

"_Henri!_" Korra forgot that she wasn't supposed to be body shy right around the word 'thermometer' and in between her two shirts. She glared at her costumer and clutched the new shirt to her chest a bit belatedly.

"Friend," the word rolled off of his tongue with a distinctive French-flavoured sound that made her smile, despite herself, "You have nothing I haven't seen a hundred times, and nothing I'm interested in. Now change shirts and tell me what you thought of the first one."

She glared at him a little more, until he finally turned his back with an exasperated sigh, which mollified her despite the fact that she was still in a room filled with other people. She slipped the new shirt on – well, more like wiggled into it, stretching and twisting to settle the material across her back and stomach. It was _quite_ snug-fitting, so much so that she was almost certain she wouldn't like it.

That, and it had the unfortunate side effect of compressing her already-modest bust even further.

"The first one felt okay. A bit chafe-y around the arm holes, a little loose at the waist like you said. The neck felt like I was…I dunno. Wearing a turtleneck a little too small or something. The thickness felt okay, though."

She raised her arms above her head, then did some quick toe-touches and back-twists. "This one is way too tight. Way, way too tight."

Henri made more notes, then rummaged through the rack of nearly-identical blue muscle shirts to hand her a third.

"And it does unfortunate things to your twins," he noted dryly, plucking down a fourth and a fifth shirt as well and setting them aside.

Her cheeks flamed, and for once she was glad of her mixed heritage – her dark skin meant the blush didn't show up quite as strongly.

"Henri, _please _stop discussing my chest. Please." Her answer this time was an eyeroll and an impatient shake of the third shirt. Taking the hint, she peeled out of the second with a gasp of relief and tossed it aside.

She went on like that for most of the morning, although unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on perspective – her 'stress tests' didn't line up with Asami's again. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity and about a hundred shirts and jackets and probably fifty pairs of pants and boots, her final costume sets were settled on. The rough pieces she'd tried on would be finished with the appropriate decorative bits – a lot of fur, from what she'd been shown – and duplicated as necessary for filming.

She felt as though the costuming building spat her out when she finally emerged from the chaos into the bright light of late morning. She smiled when she saw Asami standing across the way, and her head cocked to one side as she took the young men standing with her. She assumed these would be 'Mako' and 'Bolin', then…and that Asami had already gotten to them.

She sighed. At this rate, she was going to forget her own name before the first season was over.

Then she remembered the bet they'd made before the fight started, and grinned broadly. That fight had been interrupted, but she was willing to bet Asami would take her up on a rematch, and Korra was positive she'd win. She'd been doing martial arts since she could toddle, courtesy of her father the MMA trainer. He'd actually used her as a motivational tool on many an occasion – nothing motivates a proud, testosterone-driven fighter to shape up better than 'my six-year-old_daughter_ has better form than you!'.

So she'd take Asami down, and she'd get her name back. She grinned broadly as she approached the small group, already planning how she'd oh-so-casually suggest a retake of their interrupted match.

_Say my name, bitch._

* * *

In the end, she found herself going out to lunch with her would-be opponent and the two other actors. As she'd predicted, Asami had gotten both young men on board with her ridiculous idea, and they spent the whole meal referring to each other by their three pseudo-Chinese names and one legitimately Japanese one.

"I mean, I know the whole way they're doing this show is on the batshit end of the 'unorthodox' spectrum, but how come you're the only one with a regular stunt double? It's right in my contract that I do all my own stunts unless the insurance company puts the brakes on, and then they'll bring in a contractor. No permanent double for me."

Asami – and how it galled her to keep calling the other girl by that name – just shrugged, flipping her hair back over her shoulder in a practiced move that made Korra just a little jealous. She'd always been the burly martial artist tomboy, all muscles and coarse 'Eskimo' hair that she kept braided or otherwise tied back lest it go on a rampage.

"Well," the pale girl answered with a shrug, "I guess they couldn't find an experienced martial artist who was _also_ a stunt driver, so something had to give, and the character does some pretty crazy driving from day one. It's probably easier to shoot the stunt driving from a distance and have the actress do her own martial arts…I would guess, anyway. Not like I'm the one in charge of the decisions."

"Makes sense," Bolin replied around a mouthful of pizza. Korra liked him – he reminded her of herself, all broad-shouldered and with a bottomless pit for a stomach. He looked a bit on the pudgy side, but she assumed that was just an illusion created by the baggy sweatshirt and jeans. Any serious martial artist did enough exercise in one day to keep the pudge well away, and as far as she knew only serious fighters had been cast for this bit of television magic. The thought made her smile, and Asami poked her in the side, then blinked.

"Boy, you sure have a lot of muscles under there. I thought I was poking a rock!"

Korra just grinned, giving a little shrug. She wasn't going to apologize for the genetic luck that gave her the uncommon – in women – ability to form a proper six-pack. As far as she was concerned, she was being downright polite by wearing t-shirts that were neither skin-tight nor midriff-baring.

"But," Asami continued, "Before I got distracted I was going to ask what you were smiling about."

The dark-skinned girl lifted a piece of pizza in response, as if giving a toast.

"Just thinking about how nice it's gonna be to work with a cast of serious martial artists…and how we'll get to eat whatever we want because we work it off like crazy!"

"Cheers to that," responded the previously-quiet Mako, lifting a slice for himself, "I've seen how some actors starve themselves to stay thin and pretty, and I don't want to go there!"

After consuming two large pizzas between the four of them, they toddled on back to the lot, where the rest of the crew were picking through the last of the catering remnants. Korra took a bracing breath, because she wasn't looking forward to the next bit.

It was time for makeup.


End file.
